Experts acknowledge Chiropractic for Headaches...

Headaches Helped by Chiropractic Says Research

In the September 2001 issue of the Journal of Manipulative and Physio logical Therapeutics was a report on the effectiveness of chiropractic care, specifically labeled "SMT" in the study, for patients with chronic headaches. The data for this report was gathered from nine trials involving 683 patients with chronic headache.

In this study chiropractic adjustments (termed SMT in the study) were compared to massage and medications for short term relief of up to six weeks after a month of care. The question of long term health benefits was not addressed. Results showed that the chiropractic group did better than the massage group. The group that received medication also showed relief however, the rate of side effects for the medication group was considerably higher than the chiropractic group. This difference gave a decidedly large advantage to chiropractic over the medication.

According to the report, the financial cost of headaches is great, with billions of dollars spent annually for lost productivity and treatment. The study also noted that people affected with headaches have commonly been treated by medical practitioners. Recently however, they are increasingly turning to non-medical or alternative therapies for relief. A recent study from Harvard University by Dr. Eisenberg reported that one of the most common alternative practitioners sought out for the treatment of headaches was the chiropractor. This study confirms what most chiropractors and their patients have already known, that chiropractic is one of the most effective avenues of health for headache sufferers.

Research Shows Improved Immunity Through Chiropractic

In 1986, Ronald Pero, Ph D., collaborated with Joseph Flesia, D.C., chairman of the board of directors for the Chiropractic Basic Science Research Foundation, Inc. With a hefty grant from CBSRF, they began a research project at the University of Lund in Lund, Sweden. Using Pero’s tests to gauge resistance to hazardous environmental chemicals, they hypothesized that people with cancer would have a suppressed immune response to such a toxic burden. While healthy people and people receiving chiropractic care should have a relatively enhanced response.

Measuring 107 individuals who had received long-term chiropractic care Pero’s team turned up some surprising findings. All chiropractic patients were "genetically normal" – that is, they had no obvious genetic reasons for increased resistance or susceptibility to disease. Any difference, therefore, had to be accounted for by environmental or therapeutic factors. The chiropractic patients also had 200% greater immune-competence that people who had not received chiropractic, and 400% greater immune-competence than people with cancer or other serious diseases. Surprisingly, despite a wide range of ages in this study, the immune-competence did not show any decline with age – it was uniform for the entire group.

Pero concluded that "chiropractic may optimize whatever genetic abilities you have" so that you can fully resist serious disease. "I’m very excited to see that without chemical intervention… this particular group of patients under chiropractic care did show a very improved response." he told CBSRF. "These changes occur from chiropractic treatment."

Source: New York's Preventive Medicine Institute